BlueWater Reporting: Liner capacity declines marginally in 3Q

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Most of the world’s major container trade lanes saw a nominal amount of capacity withdrawn from the beginning of July to the beginning of October, according to the latest World Liner Supply Report from the BlueWater Reporting service of American Shipper affiliate ComPair Data.
Weekly eastbound transpacific allocated capacity fell 1.3 percent from July 1 to Oct. 1 to 288,787 TEUs, while on the westbound transpacific, capacity fell 2.2 percent in the period to 302,666 TEUs.
Meanwhile, westbound Asia-Europe capacity fell 1.7 percent in the period to 341,900 TEUs. Eastbound Europe-to-Asia capacity fell 3.8 percent to 337,946 TEUs. Eastbound transatlantic capacity fell 1.6 percent to 98,774 TEUs, and westbound transatlantic capacity fell 1.8 percent to 101,164 TEUs.
Allocated capacity is ComPair Data’s estimate of the capacity provided by service operators on a particular trade.
The CKYH Green Alliance has maintained its sizable market share lead on the eastbound transpacific at 27.8 percent, including a 30.5 percent share to the West Coast of North America. But that total eastbound transpacific share is down from 28.9 percent on July 1, mostly due to a loss of share on all-water service to the East Coast.
The Grand Alliance, New World Alliance, and Maersk Line all picked up share from the CKYH carriers on the transpacific all-water lane over the three-month period.
But on the Asia-West Coast trade, CKYH provides double the weekly allocated capacity of the next biggest service faction, the New World Alliance, two-and-half times more than the Grand Alliance, and more than triple that of Evergreen Line, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and Maersk. Those numbers changed little from July.
On the westbound Asia-Europe lane, Maersk marginally increased its market-leading share of capacity to 21.7 percent, followed closely by the CKYH carriers (19.3 percent), MSC (15.2 percent), the G6 Alliance (14.2 percent), and CMA CGM (10.2 percent).
Maersk’s share of both Asia-Northern Europe and Asia-Mediterranean capacity is remarkably similar, but MSC has a much larger share of Asia-Mediterranean capacity (21.2 percent) than Asia-Northern Europe capacity (12.1 percent).
Alternatively, the G6 Alliance has a 19.2 percent share of Asia-Northern Europe capacity, but only a 4.3 percent share of Asia-Mediterranean capacity.
The quarterly World Liner Supply Reports are designed to help ocean carriers, non-vessel-operating common carriers, freight forwarders, shippers, ports and analysts monitor competition and capacity trends in liner shipping. The report tracks on a quarterly basis how capacity moves on 30 individual lanes operating between Asia, Europe, North America and South America.
WLS reports are downloadable in Excel spreadsheet form. The report is available here. - Eric Johnson